Electric Company, a unique "orchestra" featuring 10 laptop computers and staffed by multi-talented musician-hacker-programmers, will stage two performances in October.

The "Electric Company: An Orchestra of Laptops" concerts will see the group perform original works by composers from the US and Hong Kong. The works will include five brand-new commissions, among which is a "concerto" for saxophone and laptop orchestra featuring soloist and YouTube celebrity Timothy Sun. Patrons are invited to use smartphones as part of the show, which promises to be an evening of boundary-pushing musical experiments that cannot be missed.

Composers Paul Lansky (US), Sascia Pellegrini (Italy/Hong Kong), Vanissa Law (Hong Kong), Tang Lok-yin (Hong Kong) and Lam Lai (Hong Kong) have turned bio-sensing and gestural sensing capacities into musical resources. In its performances, Electric Company will present a new audio-visual version of computer music guru Lansky's "Pattern's pattern": computers may sometimes be heard in random chatter, or in conscious unison at other times. Lansky's eight-channel classic subverts the default relationship between humans and machines.

Electric Company is devoted to the art of musical coding. The group's members develop their own software and hardware musical instruments, and exploit the bio-sensing, gestural sensing and networking capacities of laptop computers to musical ends.

Presented by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, the "Electric Company: An Orchestra of Laptops" performances by Electric Company will be staged at 8pm on October 18 and 19 (Friday and Saturday) at the Multi-Media Theatre at the HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity. Tickets priced at $200 are now available at all URBTIX outlets, on the Internet and by credit card telephone booking. Half-price tickets are available for senior citizens aged 60 or above, people with disabilities and their minders, full-time students and Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) recipients (limited tickets for CSSA recipients available are on a first-come, first-served basis). For the group booking discount, please refer to the programme leaflet for details.